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I thought the origin of sushi was some odd fisherman's meal involving slightly fermented fish (yum!) with rice, which would have been duplicated more recently using vinegar to replicate the tang of fermentation (cf. fermented traditional sauerkraut v. modern vinegar-based kraut). Would be interesting to go to a top sushi place and send back the order for being too fresh.

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I have a few questions: I normally IF until noon, is once a day good enough, ie. mid-morning for me? I read they recommend something like 1TBS per 75lbs of weight, that would be about 3 TBS for me--sound right? Do you use organic virgin coconut oil? The stuff I have is solid at room temp and has quite a coconut smell, but little taste--is that the good stuff?

otzi, don't be a hater! To answer your questions, I don't really know how the volume of oil you take specifically affects yours results, but I imagine a thorough perusing of the many different experimentation threads on the SLD forums would give you a good idea. I do 2tbsp, but on days when I've been lazy or just forgotten to take the second tbsp, I haven't noticed any stalling in the weight loss. What I've noticed is that, for me, the weight loss goes in a five-day cycle approximately like this: loss, LOSS, loss, maintain, maintain (the lower-case "loss" is .5lb to 1lb, the all-caps "LOSS" is 1.5-2lb). Once every two or three of these cycles, there is a gain of 1-2lb, which then immediately goes away again with the new cycle. It was reading through the threads on the SLD forums, like marthat's thread that she linked, that helped me not freak out if I had a gain.

All told, since starting SLD on Dec. 3, I've lost 14.1lbs at my lowest (three days ago); I had a gain of a pound yesterday that I maintained today, so it's 13.1 lbs lost at the moment. Even with little blips and gains, the weightloss cycle I described has been weirdly steady, like clockwork. Also, during Christmas week, I definitely indulged in non-paleo goodies like pizza, cookies, and ice cream, and still lost weight.

3tbsp is what a lot of men on the SLD forums do, so I think that sounds fine. I'd say just experiment. If you get solid appetite suppression at 2tbsp, no reason to overdo it with 3.

I use Spectrum organic coconut oil, REFINED. That part is important. I started off with the unrefined virgin oil from Dr. Bronner I had laying around, and the coconut flavor was so strong that even pinching my nose and rinsing out my mouth with water afterwards, I could taste it. It's very important to have NO flavor associated with the oil. I just hold my nose while I take my oil, works perfectly.

Heetseeker, im wondering if you used a different oil or the sugar water if you would see the same results.

A very good question, and maybe once I've hit my weight loss goal I'll play around with it. There are a whole field of unknowns associated with this--primarily, once I hit my goal weight, if I stop taking the oil, will I gain again?--that are bridges I'll have to cross when I come to them. But if I had to guess, I'd say, yes, it would work with different oils. People on the SLD forums use a wide variety of oils. marthat used all kinds of things, and even had success eating cottage cheese with her nose clipped to block out the flavor. As far as the sugar water? No clue, and I don't really see a circumstance where I'd try the sugar water method, but loads of people have had the exact same results with SW as with oil, so my guess would be, probably.

Look out, folks! Otzi has found The Next Big Thing. Hey Otzi, my friend, would it totally bum you out to know that I have been following this protocol for ages? I just came at it from the Enig & Fallon book (minus the sprouted grains) approach rather than the SLD.

What I basically do is have what I call my "fat snack" sometime in the afternoon and then a normal sized dinner about two hours later. I have rooibos tea with coconut cream in the mornings. The fat snack is sometimes butter and sometimes CO. I don't know why but some days I am just craving one and the other sounds disgusting, then the opposite on another day. The fat snack really does blunt the hunger.

It's interesting when "experts" as divergent as Roberts, Enig, Fallon, and Peat all come to the same conclusion about coconut oil.

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I was one of Seth's original participants. There has been a lot of incredible self experimentation encouraged on that forum. Many of us have used flavourful oils--and used a noseclip (or noseblocking technique) in order not to taste--the dissasociation of flavour from calories seems to be the most important aspect of resetting the setpoint. It makes me happy to see people interested in his work--

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Look out, folks! Otzi has found The Next Big Thing. Hey Otzi, my friend, would it totally bum you out to know that I have been following this protocol for ages? I just came at it from the Enig & Fallon book (minus the sprouted grains) approach rather than the SLD.

What I basically do is have what I call my "fat snack" sometime in the afternoon and then a normal sized dinner about two hours later. I have rooibos tea with coconut cream in the mornings. The fat snack is sometimes butter and sometimes CO. I don't know why but some days I am just craving one and the other sounds disgusting, then the opposite on another day. The fat snack really does blunt the hunger.

It's interesting when "experts" as divergent as Roberts, Enig, Fallon, and Peat all come to the same conclusion about coconut oil.

Actually, my 'next big thing at the moment is the Perfect Health Diet...I'm just intrigued by the SLD. I don't have any weight left to lose thanks to the potato hacks, and I have my appetite and eating completely under control, but things like the SLD show me that there is always more than meets the eye when it comes to diet/health/fitness.

Not to get off track, but all those carb re-feed threads last year...I'm now convinced it was more just the starch that was causing the great successes people were having when refeeding, especially when they were refeeding with sw. potatoes, and potatoes. I was a serious carb-o-phobe back then and any refeeds I did were more fruit and some rice, but no where near what I'm eating on a daily basis now and still maintaining. I remember Choco posting a picture of a plateful of sweet potatoes saying he was eating them in one meal, I thought 'holy hell, I'd never eat that crap!'.

At this point, following PHD, I'm eating exactly 1 pound of potatoes (which is under 500kcal), 1 pound of fruit and veggies, 1 pound of meat w/fat, and then some discretionary stuff like chocolate, nuts, cheese whatever. I find it's a very intuitive way to eat and the macros/calories come out to 30/20/50 (C-P-F) @ 2000-2500 kcal. Using the gross weight is much easier than trying to figure individual calories/weights/macros, etc... And. since Mark Sisson is a fan, I don't mind talking about it here.

An interesting thing that came out of all those potato threads is the power of resistant starch. I noticed, as well as many others, that when eating mostly potatoes, we'd go into ketosis almost immediately...the massive amount of RS is quickly converted to short-chain fatty acids in the large intestine and actually provides you with a high fat diet. This is the same mechanism that gorillas and many other mammals use to get their needed fats by eating only starchy, fibrous plants.

The human body is indeed an amazing piece of machinery.

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An interesting thing that came out of all those potato threads is the power of resistant starch. I noticed, as well as many others, that when eating mostly potatoes, we'd go into ketosis almost immediately...the massive amount of RS is quickly converted to short-chain fatty acids in the large intestine and actually provides you with a high fat diet. This is the same mechanism that gorillas and many other mammals use to get their needed fats by eating only starchy, fibrous plants.

You were going into ketosis on the spud fest due to the low calorie intake, not the RS.

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You were going into ketosis on the spud fest due to the low calorie intake, not the RS.

That's what I thought at first, too, but I don't believe it. Even when I would eat 1800+ calories I would be in 'heavy' ketosis on the ketostix, had super keto breath and weird colored urine. I did 45 days of a ketogenic diet from 1 Nov-15 Dec this year and could barely get into the lower end of the color spectrum, even when eating 1000kcal for several days. I think that my liver was converting the protein to glucose so fast I could never get into ketosis, but with the potatoes, your liver doesn't have a say in it--it's done by the little fellows hitching a ride in your guts.

This is just speculation--you may be right. You know a lot more about ketosis than me..

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That's what I thought at first, too, but I don't believe it. Even when I would eat 1800+ calories I would be in 'heavy' ketosis on the ketostix, had super keto breath and weird colored urine. I did 45 days of a ketogenic diet from 1 Nov-15 Dec this year and could barely get into the lower end of the color spectrum, even when eating 1000kcal for several days. I think that my liver was converting the protein to glucose so fast I could never get into ketosis, but with the potatoes, your liver doesn't have a say in it--it's done by the little fellows hitching a ride in your guts.

This is just speculation--you may be right. You know a lot more about ketosis than me..

1) ketostix are notoriously unreliable.
2) 1800/day is still way low for a full grown man. I don't know your stats but I suspect that if you were really eating at or above your TDEE on all spuds, you would not be in ketosis at all.
3) I would agree with your idea about the protein to glucose conversion possibly being what kept you out of deeper ketosis. You have to be careful to structure a ketogenic diet with enough fat in it. Spoonfuls of coconut oil can help with that, (to bring things back to the SLD)

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Wow, having never heard of this diet before I read the links and the idea has been buzzing around my head all day....Think I might give this a try.
My question is, it is said repeatedly that the calories must be flavorless, but then I saw some posts on one of the boards ( the platnium calories one, I think) that said they mixed coconut oil in with chocolate as a kind of hot cocoa. Isn't that something completely different since it's forming an association with a comfort food? Maybe there are two different ideas at play here; purely psychological association that breaks down food reward centers and purely physical appetite suppressant....Hmm.

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Wow, having never heard of this diet before I read the links and the idea has been buzzing around my head all day....Think I might give this a try.
My question is, it is said repeatedly that the calories must be flavorless, but then I saw some posts on one of the boards ( the platnium calories one, I think) that said they mixed coconut oil in with chocolate as a kind of hot cocoa. Isn't that something completely different since it's forming an association with a comfort food? Maybe there are two different ideas at play here; purely psychological association that breaks down food reward centers and purely physical appetite suppressant....Hmm.

I'm still just reading, but it seems they must be flavorless. The theory seems to be that the body finds 2-300 excess calories and can't figure out where they came from, so shuts down your hunger and resets weight setpoint over time. Kind of like your body thinks you went from eating slim pickin's in winter to having plentiful food in summer...it just knows you are getting more energy from the food you are currently eating so it can up the metabolism and lower the weight setpoint since it figures you found a good supply of chow and wants you to keep eating without getting fat.

Just my mind running wild, but I think that's how it is sold....

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The idea is that flavourless calories do NOT give the message of abundance, as they would in nature. So the body reduces the weight setpoint as a survival mechanism in hard times. Once your body weight is sitting above your setpoint, you naturally are not hungry, you eat less and your body loses weight to the setpoint. If your actual bodyweight is sitting below your setpoint, you are excessively hungry and eat until you regain to where your body wants to be. A protective mechanism.

How many times have we lost 5 or so lbs below where we usually sit, through a major struggle of restraint and intake reduction, then blow it all in a fit of uncontrolled appetite and eating and regain the weight? I know that 148-152 lbs is a huge sticking point for me and the first time I started SLD, I slid right past that point, going from 150-146 in a few days and then remaining with the lowered appetite for months, as I lost to my goal of 133-135 lbs. Took only 3 months. It was rather amazing.

Seth Roberts took the theory of the impact of flavourless calories on setpoint and bent it in various ways to try and "trick the brain" into lowering the setpoint. He tried things like flavour without calories, calories without flavour, using a flavour that is sometimes taken calorie free, then combined with calories at other times of the day. "Platinum Calories" as devised by one of the forum readers is a twist on the theory. It is based on the idea that fat calories provided alone will provide calories without triggering any insulin response at all - not such a strange concept around here. They are tasty (coconut oil in coffee, "oilmilk" - oil and water blended with lethicin, as examples), but I never found them as effective as the flavourless calories. Bulletproof coffee is the same concept - lots of fat without any other dietary calorie sources, and hence satiety that lasts for hours.

I've read every post on that forum for 5 1/2 years. It's still a permanent link on my browser bar, up there next to the local weather and Mark's Daily Apple. ;-)